Archives

Welcome to the archives of Better Cities & Towns, a publication founded by Robert Steuteville as New Urban News in 1996. This archive holds two decades of the best news and analysis on compact, mixed-use growth and development, from 1996 to 2015.
The National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education and the Maryland Department of Transportation are establishing a joint Transportation Policy Research Group at the University of Maryland in College Park. Its purposes include identifying...
Ann Daigle is coordinating work on a plan to have the Creative Film Arts Program of the University of Southern Mississippi occupy the university’s historic Gulf Coast campus in Long Beach. Hurricane Katrina destroyed some campus buildings in 2005,...
The nation’s largest nonprofit builder — known for a barebones approach — is moving forward with an ambitious and diverse neighborhood.What will apparently be the first complete new urban neighborhood developed by Habitat for Humanity was designed...
Edited by Robert Adam and Matthew HardyTradition Today takes readers, at a quick pace, over a lot of interesting terrain, most of it off the Modern beaten path. It’s a refreshing excursion.
The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $59,000 to the University of Miami’s Center for Urban and Community Design to document sustainable building practices and techniques. The Center, directed by Sonia Cháo, hosted a 2.5-day symposium in...
When was the last time you heard of a building being named for an urban planner? That rare event has just occurred in Vancouver, British Columbia, where a 34-story glass tower, to be erected in the Yaletown section of downtown, is being called “The...
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture, has been appointed to the US Commission of Fine Arts for four years by President George Bush.
Connie M. Moran was elected mayor of her hometown, Ocean Springs, Miss., in June 2005.  Two months later, Hurricane Katrina changed almost everything.“Her leadership was immediately tested and she was a real stand-out among all the elected officials...
Many lots in old neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kansas, are just 25 feet wide, which is generally too narrow to satisfy current minimum standards for the construction of new houses. Consequently, 180 Degree Urban Design + Architecture has produced a...
The Routledge publishing house this spring launched the Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability. The multidisciplinary, international journal will be distributed three times a year both in print and online...
“Light Imprint New Urbanism,” an environmentally sensitive approach to planning, has won Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. a Green Innovation Award from the Charlotte (North Carolina) Business Journal and the Charlotte Chapter of the US Green Building...
Dover Kohl led a charrette in November, 2007, to design Long Savannah in Charleston, South Carolina — a new town with close to 3,000 acres, according to James Dougherty of Dover Kohl. The development will include an 1,800-acre open space buffer, a...